May 18 Doing data

US-based Qualtrics has been working on its X factor for the past five years. And it has now created an experience management offering, the Qualtrics XM platform, to help organisations collect feedback at every meaningful touchpoint of the customer and employee experience, says Sally Ratclliffe.

“We clearly live in a new world. A world where companies are disproportionately rewarded when they deliver great experiences. And disproportionately punished when they don’t,” says the firm’s CEO and co-founder Ryan Smith. “Businesses are still getting very surprised by the amount of data and we are more data-driven than we have ever been, but it’s mission-critical now and companies need to use all of the data and use it better.”

Qualtrics has defined four pillars of data - customer, employee, product and brand – and for Qualtrics XM has created a tool so that data from every area can be brought up at once in real time, all in the same place. The system has been created to look for vital correlations and to create essential questions and, of course, answers. How are customers feeling? How can employee engagement be improved? What is brand sentiment from the perspective of the employee?

Some of the analysis is programmable. AI is used to look for the occurrence and re-occurrence of key words used in feedback on surveys, for example.

Qualtrics set out to explore data in differing forms because it recognised that many companies were stuck in a trap. Smith explains that the data that most are familiar and comfortable with is ‘o-data’, or operational data, such as sales, finance, HR, day-to-day operational flows into the business, which unless it is utilised correctly can remain static. Looking at any of the core sets of data in isolation is dangerous.

Leading insurer Allianz has listened to Qualtrics. It was aware that disruption could come to its market at any time and wanted to stay ahead. Experience management has become increasingly important to the business, and as Allison Windon, global director of customer experience explains, ‘we aim to put customers at the heart of every conversation. It’s changed how we work and has refocused our efforts to create experiences around our customers.”

Qualtrics is confident that it can offer solutions through matching and correlating data holistically across a whole enterprise. Investors like the sound of this too, The company has just snagged $180 million in funding from Accel Partners and Insight Venture Partners.